Vibrant Burgers

Growing up, I've always had a fond love for burgers, be it fast food burgers from KFC, Burger King, Mc Donalds or the fancier gourmet burgers. I recieved an invite yesterday night from the new, swanky ITC Fortune Hotel located in Miramar to come try out their new burger menu which was on for a limited period from 15th June to 30th June. Coloured buns aside, the thought of a fully customizable burger enticed me to get up, get dressed and head straight to the Fortune, to give it a try.

The burger, priced at Rs.300 for meat and Rs.250 for veg comes with potato wedges, pickled onions and either a Kingfisher Draught or a Mocktail. Which even before eating sounds like a pretty good deal. A burger, sides and a drink within Rs.300 is pretty great!

Customizable Burger

Mocktail/Cocktail Menu

5 options to pick from for you complimentary mocktail (With the burger)

Each burger is customizable right from the patty to the toppings to the bun and you can do this in a few easy steps.

You start by choosing a patty for you Burger. This can either be a fried veg patty, a fried fish patty made from Red Snapper(Chonak), a grilled chicken patty, a grilled turkey patty, a steamed/grilled mutton patty or a pulled pork filling.

Next you have to choose a bun and besides regular buns like Multigrain, and wholewheat they they also have two unique buns, a red one and a black one.

The next step would be to choose a cheese from their wide range of options like processed, Swiss, pepper, herb, pimento and mozzarella. Besides the processed and Swiss cheese, all the other cheeses are actually made in-house by the chef.

The next step was to pick a sauce from the different options like BBQ, mustard, aoili as well as some unique homemade sauces like buttermilk ranch and sriracha mayo.

You also have an option to add extra toppings to your burger for Rs.50 per topping. You can choose from bacon, fried egg, caramelized onions, sauteed mushrooms and nappa cabbage coleslaw

You may have noticed above, that I mentioned ''Dehydrated Ketchup'' , the cool thing about dehydrated ketchup is instead of your regular tomato ketchup which is squeezed onto your burger, they have created dehydrated ketchup slices which is kind of like sliced cheese. The inspiration behind the concept for Head-Chef Pranay, was derived from the process of how we locals make sundried Mango/Jackfruit sheets. The ketchup is spread and then dehydrated into sheets which can then be placed in between the burger and then due to the heat of the burger eventually melts and reduces to a liquid, plus marks for creativity there!

Anyway, to start off with I decided to go with a black bun burger filled with pulled pork, aioli sauce, mozarella cheese, an extra topping of sauteed mushrooms along with the works (Gerkhins, jalapenos, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, lettuce and dehydrated ketchup).

The pulled pork was cooked perfectly and went so well with the silky mozzarella cheese and the juicy sautéed mushrooms while the garlic aoili balanced the flavours out well. Messy, but a really nice burger. Interestingly the black bun was not made using squid ink, which is what I thought made the bun black. Squid Ink is a bit difficult to obtain and so the chef decided to put his own twist by roasting onion poweder until he got the desired color and mixed it with the dough.

​Next up was a red bun, chicken burger that was topped with barbecue sauce, swiss cheese, an extra topping of bacon with the works.

The standout of this burger was the patty. I'm not a huge fan of chicken burgers but this patty was super moist , juicy and really fragrant, it was probably made using a dash of ginger and lemongrass as the patty had a lightly pungent, fragrant kick to it. The swiss cheese was alright and along with the barbecue sauce and bacon the burger was great. The red bun was made using beetroot puree in the dough.

Finally I choose a multigrain bun with a mutton patty, mustard sauce, pimento cheese (Cheese with bits of red pepper) and extra topping of Napa Cabbage Coleslaw with the works.

I liked the patty, the coleslaw was decent too and the mustard along with the pimento cheese added a lot of zing to the burger. The pimento cheese was my favorite of the 3 that I tried, it had a great flavour to it.

For the mocktails we decided to try the Green Iced Tea (Made with green tea), the Pink Lemonade (Lemonade with Raspberry syrup) and the Kiwi Bazooka (Fresh Kiwi and Lime lemonade). All three were great, the pink lemonade was too sweet for my liking and mind you, I can take a lot of sweet. The Kiwi Bazooka was really refreshing and flavoursome and the green ice tea was really simple, subtle and nice.

Green Ice Tea

Pink Lemonade

Kiwi Bazooka

It was a great experience and definitely something unique and I apologize for not talking much about it because honestly, no two burgers would be the same and everything depends on how you customize your burger and the blend of ingredients and how well they all go together. If you get your combinations right you'll love the burgers. The burgers are part of a limited duration menu up for another week, up to the 30th of June. I've heard that they are planning on extending it for two more weeks due to the response but I'd suggest you don't take any chances and go there as soon as possible. They start serving burgers from 11 am right to 11 pm. Don;t forget to click pictures and use the hashtags #FortuneMiramar and #MiramarBurger and you could stand a chance to win free dessert.